After Mortal Kombat 4, Midway reinvented the Mortal Kombat series and successfully released Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance on Valentine’s day last year. It was a complete overhaul for the series and was a huge hit. Obviously not content with last year’s effort, Midway have once again gone back to the drawing board and expanded upon Deadly Alliance and ironically enough that’s where the first problem of the game lies, it is just an expansion rather than the massive overhaul that we witnessed with Deadly Alliance. Sure Mortal Kombat fans will be pleased, but will those sitting on the sidelines be converted by this Mortal Kombat title?
So what’s the story this time? Long before Liu Kang had won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in Earthrealm, Shujinko had begun his quest to retrieve the Kamidogu for the Elder Gods. Now an ancient evil has returned from beyond death and threatens the very existence of the realms. Will the champion of the Elder Gods have the power to defeat this threat borne of deception? It’s a much tamer story than the hard-hitting story of Deadly Alliance but still serves a purpose as to why there so much fighting involved.
Mortal Kombat: Deception’s largest inclusion is online play. It includes support for Xbox Live and Playstation 2 online. Deception is the first Mortal Kombat title to be fully playable online, an honour that Tecmo was hoping to achieve with Dead or Alive Ultimate. The online play is an appreciated inclusion that helps to extend the lifespan of the title significantly.
Midway have also packed into the game two very obscure inclusions. The first is Chess Kombat and the second is Puzzle Kombat, we will go into more detail about these two inclusions later on. The Krypt makes a welcome return and is still full of a plethora of tombstones, which unlock various goodies, and of course the classic arcade mode is present. The main mode of Deception still lies in the Konquest mode. The Konquest mode obviously starts very basic but moves on and becomes surprisingly challenging.
The Konquest mode isn’t as linear as in Deadly Alliance and allows the gamer to move around in a 3D world, even allowing gamers to kill innocent citizens if you really need the koins. The camera in Konquest mode can often become a hindrance and the character doesn’t control as well as we’d like, but it is a good start to a fully free roaming Mortal Kombat title and something we’d love to see implemented in the future. Konquest mode also gives the illusion that the mode offers more free roaming than there actually is, with objectives needing to be fulfilled before progression can take place in the world.
As mentioned above, there is also a Puzzle Kombat mode featured in the game. This is a puzzle game but with a Mortal Kombat twist. This is basically tetris but with miniature Mortal Kombat characters down the bottom of the screen. Surprisingly enough, this was quite an addictive little game and a lot of attention has been made to make it look good and play well. We were expecting Puzzle Kombat to be a tacked on addition but it actually serves as a quality extra game mode.
Unfortunately, the second novel inclusion of Mortal Kombat: Deception, Chess Kombat isn’t as good as it sounds. Players choose a leader, champion, sorcerer, shifter and a grunt and try to defeat the other team in a game of chess. When the gamer’s character lands on a square with the oppositions character a battle takes place. Naturally, the winner of the battle takes the square. Chess Kombat is fun the first few times but we honestly cannot see many players returning to play it more than Puzzle Kombat.
Just like in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance there is a tonne of items to unlock, which should extend the lifespan of the title immensely. Some of these items include unlockable characters, production art, photos and movies and even the ability to listen to the entire soundtrack. All of this should satisfy the needs of the Mortal Kombat fan and some of the inclusions are genuinely great.
The game play hasn’t changed that much from Deadly Alliance, most of the inclusions in Deception are in the new game modes. There are more fatalities included for those who are more violently inclined and the areas are a lot more destructive.
The graphics have received a small overhaul to keep the game looking great. The visuals obviously aren’t as good as Dead or Alive: Ultimate but they are still pleasing on the eye and more importantly the game still looks and feels like a Mortal Kombat title.
Mortal Kombat: Deception is a quality fighting game that lacks one thing, innovation. We would like to see the series evolve more and include more of everything. The Konquest mode shows severe potential but is let down a little by the restrictions and poor challenges. Mortal Kombat: Deception will take at least twenty hours to unlock everything and if you are planning on going online then it easily becomes a fifty hour game.
There are five extensive modes in the game (Chess Kombat, Arcade, Puzzle Kombat, Konquest mode and Online Play), which means, if the gamer gets bored of one mode, they can move onto the next. Mortal Kombat fans will lap this title up, as it contains more options, more blood and more violence. We’re just not sure whether those who are looking for a in-depth fighting game will be pleased by all that Mortal Kombat has to offer or whether they will be left wanting a better fighting experience.
Nonetheless, we recommend that everyone tries Mortal Kombat: Deception as it really is an acquired taste, Midway have produced a quality fighting game that feels really polished, but we would have loved for the Konquest mode to be a little better.
Loading...
